Immersive Experiences are Key to Consumer Engagement in Sports and Entertainment

Virtual immersive experiences are captivating new converts, quickly taking on a “must have” status due to transformative ways to access, build, and engage.

Last year was the year you traveled to the metaverse —either as a brand or a consumer— to unlock a new world of community. You were on the right path. Yet it was just that, a path … without a clear destination. 

In 2023, that’s all changing. Persistent, enhanced, immersive experiences are being built with a new purpose: to empower creators and brands to explore the endless possibilities that the virtual world can offer in upending flat online retail interactions and static, one-way viewership of events. As a result, Grand View Research foresees a nearly 40% compound annual growth rate (CAGR) for the global metaverse market by 2030.

Blending and bending the live physical world with the virtual world was a constant theme at CES 2023, the world’s largest consumer technology trade show. It was clear that brand winners will embrace enabling consumers to view their favorite content and interact in deeply immersive ways.

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The novelty of immersive worlds is no longer enough to drive audience and community response. Metaverse efforts this year will center around finding real world utility. Just like the internet, the metaverse will take off into the stratosphere the moment brands and creators figure out how to take advantage of it for profitable opportunities in verticals beyond gaming, such as broadcast, streaming, and ecommerce.

Proximity and inclusion

The first step in creating this transformation is altering the way you enter and navigate the virtual world itself. That awkward virtual reality headgear you strapped on a few years ago? It has been reimagined, with CES demonstrations indicating many user-friendly options on the near horizon. 

To better promote accessibility for reaching the broader consumer audience, the metaverse is being designed to work also on web browsers — desktop, tablet, and smartphone. Platform and device-agnostic spaces enable creating and hosting experiences that break down walls and spark face-to-face interactions, allowing communities, creators, and brands to share immersive experiences with as many fans as possible.

Being untethered to hardware frees creators to put the needs of the consumer first in ways that the internet and brick-and-mortar outlets cannot. After a few years on Zoom, we all know what it’s like to have distance removed from the equation, and consumers now demand that feeling of proximity and inclusion everywhere they go. They want to interact with artists before they purchase the painting; they need to see how the jacket fits before it goes in their cart; and they crave the reciprocal love and attention of the sports teams they support and the musicians they follow.

These experiences are in real time, at the pace the user wants, and through their preferred device. And they happen in a world with photo-realistic technology and cutting-edge Hollywood production that can be curated and developed for each brand’s audience, while still allowing fans and shoppers to determine what is most valuable to them. The metaverse becomes a place that people yearn to enter and enjoy without abandoned shopping carts littering sidewalks or clogging intersections.

A two-way main street

As the metaverse grows, so too will its viability as a marketing platform, as businesses seek a wider audience in the virtual world. MarketsandMarkets estimates the Total Addressable Market (TAM) for influencer marketing platforms is heading from $16 billion to over $24 billion by 2025.

This year “main street” in retail is going to be a two-way street as never before. It’s  more than just the user experience; it has to be an expansion and growth opportunity for brands, who should view themselves as co-creators. Brands have the power to develop a new caliber of immersive audience and fan engagement that organically supports commercial opportunities that disrupt the traditionally passive event participation, viewership, and commerce. Relationships can be deepened through thrilling and immersive technology that includes back-end tools, analytics, content moderation, and user management capabilities.

Today, companies stress that in order to thrive, they need to understand customers and users more accurately. They want to aggregate, analyze, and activate fans based on first-party data derived through real-time insights, to drive more views, transactions, and personalized incentives to build long-term relationships.

As a result, more brands and creators will be creating their own custom experiences in ways they can better control and deliver. In a completely immersive environment, businesses can easily track, compare, and contrast how their customers and fans react to different products and services.

Armed with deeper insight into consumption trends, companies and creators are able to enhance marketing strategies accordingly to offer more personalized branded virtual experiences for customers.

Thriving in the metaverse

The metaverse is the only place that can offer this level of immersion, and if brands aren’t there, then they aren’t seizing the opportunity. Research firm Gartner predicts that by 2027, over 40% of large organizations worldwide will look to increase revenue by leveraging new technologies including Web3 and augmented reality into metaverse-based projects.

When done right, the metaverse represents the inevitable evolution of the Internet as a revolutionary communication and commerce platform that will make the online interactions we’ve come to know seem passive, one-dimensional, and passé.

The metaverse can be a treasure trove for creativity and so much more. It’s a world without borders where the mix of entertainment, technology, innovation — commerce and culture— becomes a transformative elixir for a new era of possibilities.